English Soccer

In 2014, the conflict in the Donbas region of Ukraine began - and top football club Shakhtar Donetsk has since been in exile. This book tells their story; inevitably a story of the conflict and the recent Russian invasion but also a testament to the power of the game and the will of the players. It is ultimately a footballing story, exploring the experience and meaning of being a Shakhtar player through the lens of a country in the shadow of a huge aggressive neighbour.

For three months every year football clubs buy and sell people. They spend more than £4 billion a year on footballers, and for good reason; the right deal can help you win the game's top prizes while the wrong deal can cost you your job and bankrupt your club. It is a fast-paced, at times murky and cutthroat world worth billions, which largely operated behind closed doors - until Jim White and Kaveh Solhekol stepped in, that is. In Deadline Day, Jim and Kaveh, two of the world's leading transfer experts, take us behind the scenes of this uniquely tense, make-or-break element to the game.

Once Graeme Souness walked into the Ibrox Blue Room, nothing would be the same again. What followed wasn’t just a successful season for long-suffering fans. Nor was it something inevitable. What followed was a revolution. This is a story about change. About how Scottish football’s biggest club was transformed and how it then transformed Scottish football. About how old rules and traditions were ripped up, no matter the emotional cost.

Are you looking for a fun way to teach your child new words? Then you are in the right place! Perfect for young learners! Bonus—they learn some first-aid too! ¿Busca una forma divertida de enseñar a su hijo o hija nuevas palabras? Entonces está en el lugar adecuado.

Foot-ball: Its History for Five Centuries by M. Shearman and J.E. Vincent, narrated by Gary Middleton, explores the fascinating evolution of football (soccer and rugby) from its medieval origins to the early modern era. This comprehensive historical account delves into the sport’s early rules, traditions, and development across centuries, shedding light on how it grew into the beloved global phenomenon it is today.

Archie Macpherson's compelling biography reappraises Jock Stein's career and looks closely at the personality of the man whose shrewdness and cunning stamped him eventually with greatness. Stein hugely influenced the history of football between his debut as a professional player in Lanarkshire in 1942 and his death at the side of the pitch in 1985. He redesigned the landscape of the Scottish game as the great innovator and successfully exported his values outside the country when European football was in the grip of the ice-age of defensive football.

Each November, about a hundred people with paper poppies pinned to their coats gather around a memorial in Edinburgh. They're there to commemorate the more than a dozen members of the local football team, Heart of Midlothian - almost every member of its starting lineup and many of its backup players - who went to war. A Bigger Field Awaits Us tells the little-known but poignant story of a group of Scottish athletes and their fans who went to war together - and the stories of the few who made it home.

Sir Bobby Charlton is widely acknowledged as the greatest player ever to wear an England shirt. He won a record number of caps and scored a record number of goals. Here, in the second volume of his bestselling autobiography, Sir Bobby talks in detail about his phenomenal career with England.

In The Title, Scott Murray delivers a lively, cherry-picked history of the country's football narrative through the prism of the old First Division. Rich with humour yet underpinned with solid research, this is a glorious ramble across English football's varied terrain. With as much about Preston, Burnley, Wolves, Portsmouth and West Brom as the likes of Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United, we learn the less well-known stories the sport has to tell, such as the plight of Glossop - the smallest club to ever play top-flight football.

When a man walks on to a pitch there’s always a chance something magic can happen, that’s what keeps us coming back…’In A Man Walks On to a Pitch, Harry shares a lifetime’s experience of obsessing over football, during which he has seen it all first hand - the good, the bad and the unbelievable. Harry started in an age where players were ordinary blokes who might live on the same street as you and earn a similar wage and now manages in an era of player power.

On 30 November 1872, England took on Scotland at Hamilton Crescent in Glasgow, a match that is regarded as the first international fixture. More than 5,000 fans watched the two sides play out a 0-0 draw. It was the first of more than a thousand games played by the side, and the beginning of a national love affair that unites the country in a way that few other events can match. In Hayward's brilliant new biography of the team, based on interviews with dozens of past and present players and coaches, we get a vivid portrait of all aspects of the team's story.

This ambitious and fascinating history considers why, in the space of sixty years between 1850 and 1910, football grew from a marginal and unorganised activity to become the dominant winter entertainment for millions of people around the world. The book explores how the world’s football codes—soccer, rugby league, rugby union, American, Australian, Canadian and Gaelic—developed as part of the commercialised leisure industry in the nineteenth century.

The Premier League is the most commercially successful football league in history, the self-proclaimed 'best league in the world'. But success has come at a cost, unbalancing the English game to a profound and damaging degree. In this revealing and eye-opening analysis, leading economist Mark Gregory reveals the breadth and depth of the problems facing our national men's game, and shows us a way to bring football home for good.

In a frenetic seven-year spell at the outset of his senior managerial career, Mickey Harte led Tyrone to four Ulster Championships and three All-Irelands. It was a run that shifted football’s balance of power, changed the way the game would be played for more than a generation and cemented his reputation as one of the most transformative figures in GAA history. Then, in January 2011, the visitation of a shocking tragedy changed everything: Mickey’s daughter, Michaela, was murdered while on honeymoon in Mauritius.

George Sephton's relationship with Liverpool Football Club began in 1971 when he wrote to the club secretary applying to be the stadium announcer. His first match also marked the debut of Kevin Keegan. For the past 50 years, Sephton has been at Anfield for all but a handful of home fixtures, as well as travelling with the team to major finals. From the highs of winning numerous league titles and European Cups, to the lows of Heysel and Hillsborough, Sephton has been with Liverpool through it all.

Fresh off her football victory as QB, Alex Carlisle is on cloud nine. But with football season ending, Alex is ready to get back on the field in the spring. Ideally she'd like to play soccer again, but as she's about to sign up for tryouts, she hears word around the school that they're planning to cut athletic funding, and girls' soccer might be first to go. Now, Alex knows playing soccer is about more than just healthy competition. It's about fighting for their right to play.

There are just a handful of people that have been ever present for the thirty years of the Premier League, but only one person has been at the very epicentre for the entire period: Geoff Shreeves. Packed full of hilarious stories on and off the pitch—including trying to teach Sir Michael Caine how to act, a frightening encounter with Mike Tyson, as well as getting a lift home from the World Cup with Mick Jagger—Cheers Geoff is a must-listen for any fan of the beautiful game.

If you want something done, ask a busy person. Kate Conner could kill whoever first said that. As if the full-time mom, part-time demon hunter didn’t have enough to do, she’s now been given a third job—as headmistress at a special academy for up-and-coming slayers. Kate’s first charge? Her own teenage daughter Allie, who thanks to her unique heritage, has more power than either she or Kate understands. And definitely more than either knows how to use.

A massive audience in sitting rooms, parks and pubs watched England in the 2018 World Cup. Yet as Duncan Hamilton demonstrates with style, insight and wit in Going to the Match, watching on TV is no substitute for being there. Hamilton embarks on a richly entertaining, exquisitely crafted journey through football. Glory game or grass roots, England v Slovenia or Guiseley v Hartlepool, he delves beneath the action to illuminate the stories which make the sport endlessly compelling.

Kate Conner has incinerated hordes of demons, slow-danced with the devil, and has even saved the world from certain doom. But now she’s facing her toughest opponent yet: Her teenage daughter, Allie. Allie wants to be a demon hunter just like her mom, and she refuses to take “no” for an answer. That all comes to a head, however, when they must face the truth about Allie’s true nature. Because this teen queen is fifty percent demon hunter, fifty percent demon, and one hundred percent trouble. Uh-oh.